As an art form, tabletop roleplaying resembles literature in many ways. You can utilize the same structures and methods and it is good to practise by reading science fiction and other works. One of the most important tools of writing fiction is the story arc. Sticking to one in a game is not always easy but both authors and film directors have discovered its effectiveness in relating a story and dramatics to the reader, the viewer, or in our case the player. No matter how the scenes play out, an adventure should roughly have the following phases:
1. Introduction: an event or a person drags the stalkers
into the adventure but they do not yet know what it is about. The stalkers acquire a map drawn by a now -vanished team that shows where a valuable artefact can be found.
2. Learning: a preparatory stage where the stalkers fami-
liarize themselves with the area, the circumstances and the people involved.
Crossing the border: very perilous and tense, yet not very significant from the adventure’s point of view.
3. Journey: the adventure has begun, the dangers are real,
a clue after another is revealed and differences between the introduction and reality come out in a very real way. The map-maker’s team was not killed by an anomaly but by an aggressive inorganism. The stalkers find their remains, clues about the creature and finally signs that they them- selves are about to be attacked.
4. Climax: the date with destiny, where success or failure
ultimately gets decided. The event that the stalkers will later remember when they think about the adventure.
The artefact is easily found but the inorganism has them boxed in. They have to either try and destroy it or flee des- perately across the Zone in the middle of the night, with an angry inorganism at their heels. The success or failure of their expedition hinges on this. The players bite their fin- gernails. The air is suffused with the stuff of legends.
5. Outro: the situation at the end of the adventure is de-
fined and it is part of the reward. The adventure should not be ended at the resolution of the climax. The emotional charge has to be let out, or even success will be frustrating. After fleeing for their lives, the stalkers have to cross the border once more and to appraise and sell the artefact. Ten- sion is released. This often leads to social playing and drama between the player characters, especially if they drink too much at their victory celebration.
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THE GAMEMASTER’S BOOK
Scenes
Based on assumptions about player behaviour, the GM can plan a series of locations or situations he thinks the stalkers will run into during the adven- ture. He considers where they will likely take place, who are involved, what are the goals and what are the possible outcomes and consequences. Under- standing the motives of the NPCs is also important because when the players do something the GM was not prepared for he must still be able to figure out how the opposition will react. Even though the scenes are often pre-planned, the player actions are not. Thus, during the game the earlier scenes will shape the later ones and the final scenes probably should not be planned ahead in too much detail.
The adventure progresses from one scene to another. The scenes do not
always even happen in the expected order but this rarely changes their ac- tual content. Between them are transition periods that Roadside Picnic (or pretty much any novel) has numerous good examples of: “He finally left me and I headed swift as an arrow for the Borscht”. Nobody is interested in how long that took Red or which street corners he passed by. Just like in novels, you can use these transition periods to handle long stretches of time or extensive geographical distances.
The players’ concept of the nature of the game and its plots may be very hazy in the beginning. Stalkers in the service of an organization usually
will not even know what their employer intends to do and the players natu- rally will have no idea what the next adventure will bring. However, the GM might not always know any more than they do. Doing unexpected and unpre- dictable things comes naturally to stalkers. The team can pick different friends and enemies than what the GM expected, or the players may simply have a better idea of how any given problem is solved.
The adventure lives with the player characters. The GM can even use just the decisions of the stalkers and the changes they have wrought on the game world as a framework for the scenes.
A player’s idea on how to do something cannot be ignored just because the GM has not thought about it. Because of this, some experienced GMs do not actually do much planning for adventures. Once the players seem to have a grasp of the adventure’s in- troduction, he asks them what they will do now. The events of the adventure continue from there under their own power and with the GM’s improvisation.
If someone is working against the stalkers, the scenes can be planned according to what would happen if the player characters did not get in- volved. The GM listens to the players’ ideas, role-
plays their execution and considers how this af- fects the actions of the opposition, to which the player characters will in their turn react however they can. This series of actions and reactions will then carry on until the adventure reaches a conclu- sion. Each scene is an opportunity for the stalkers to affect the flow of events.
This is a good way to plan adventures where, for example, the henchmen of the Institute are trying to destroy a Refugee habitat that is important to the stalkers, or there is a killer loose in the border- lands that might be a creature from the Zone. If the players do nothing, the Refugees will be gone and the stalkers’ life will get more difficult, or an important client becomes a victim of the serial killer/ beast. However, there is no one correct solution or chain of events to resolve the problem.